As a designer in an office, this rings true - I regularly design, specify and draw something really efficient and find the plumber installed something else which doesn't work so well because they didn't believe the design they were given would work! So yes, giving installers faith in physics is definitely a good plan

Experience in Ireland. Step 1; contact someone who appears knowledgeable. Step 2; they come out and things seem good. Step 3; they never answer the phone again, or quote you €40k.

Something that would be extremely helpful would be to tell us EXACTLY where systems with average 2.5 SCOP go wrong. What are the things to look out for (I have quite some experience in plumbing and building works, and have tried to understand the influencing factors concerning ASHPs in general, and mine in particular), I can see a lot of pipework by the tank and where the heat pump pipes enter from outside, which is almost literally immediately outside, maybe a metre of insulated pipes outside before they appear inside for a few tens of centimetres. I have a Vaillant Arotherm (not Plus, it was a grant jobby, free to me, no say in which heat pump) 11 kW unit, with an average ANNUAL AVERAGE (because you don't say what your average figures refer to precisely) SCOP of 2.5 almost exactly, not including HW. This is a figure from the first full year's use, including the early winter last year when I was still experimenting with setting, so I'm sure I used rather more electricity for a while, while I was playing with it. I live alone, and only turn on a hot water top up every 2 or 3 days, no regular setting for that as I have an electric shower, and hardly use much HW, with which my overall SCOP is perhaps 2.2-2.3, which is for the whole system. There must be residual power consumption to power the pump and valves etc included in that number. I am on the NW coast of Scotland, and winters are not necessarily SO cold (the clue is in the coastal bit), but they are a month or two longer than in the south of England, annual ambient average temperature probably down on the south of England by 3-5 C over the year, and we have far more wind too, which rips temperature out of just about anywhere! We really get battered with wind on a regular basis, and rainfall is high too. Final thing - how do YOU calculate SCOP? For me it's a straight kWhs out divided by kWhs used. Some manufacturers seem to use an equation which makes their number look much higher and thus better, but it's a con. We had 3 months during winter when it never got much above freezing day or night (SCOP almost exactly 2.0), and even in, say, 15-18 C outside, when some heat is appreciated inside, the SCOP is never more than 3.0. BTW, compared to my old solid fuel, aka coal, central heating system, my heat pump works out, at the most, half the cost of coal and wood per annum, probably rather less than that tbh, so I feel quids in anyway. At £1,200 a year for a very toasty house, I'm not complaining! I need about 22 C all day and evening, health issues, setback to 20 C at night, so for this level of comfort I am happy enough. Of course, if that could be reduced by a third, be my guest! (If you want free accommodation for two in the NW Highlands, the swap would be for you to have a gander at my system!) But I really think it would be hard to improve my SCOP without some radical re-think. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated... Ta v'ry mooch (-:)~

I‘d like to thank you and Urban plumber for all the videos. Completed my VWL 125/6 diy install couple of days ago. COP after three days is 5.4. Insane. Getting 2000 liters of flow at 100% pumping power. Still fiddling with it.

Just to add to the data on this, the current break-even SCOP against an 80% efficient oil boiler is currently around 3.8. That's assuming 30p/kWh for electricity and 65p/litre for heating oil.

Really looking forward to seeing the video about your custom DHW Cylinder.

Awesome. Would love a video discussing different emmiters; rads, under floor and fan convectors? Fan convectors seem like an ideal, simple solution for retrofit and lowering flow temps but very little info on them.

Here in norway we are between 4-5 Scop at all new system we build. Nibe pumps with energy wells does the trick even in the coldest days

Great video! Perfect for building consumer confidence! 😁😁😁

Good waffle from a trainer of heat geeks love your positive energy

DHW for the win! Very interesting and confirms my choice of using a Heat Geek Elite installer.

Great work Adam!

I still would love to know what increases in efficiency you would get if you installed a heatpump inside a loft space with a vent to expel the cold side and a drain for the condensed water vapour. Have the hot water tank up there too, and any heat loss from the tank would then be used to re heat the air to be used by the heat pump

Great video as always! Yes we need more better training of installer as we had quotes for last 3 years for heat pumps but at 3 ish soc and 6-10 k£ including bus discount I decided to wait as i would be good bit dearer than our gas bill so last winter went over electricity heating and this winter should be gas free hopefully too . Paying lot of money to fit heat pump and be dearer to run is not on ! Couldn't even get my energy supplies that fits heat pumps to provide the true running cost estimate on my usage as well as the epc that they all wanted to show even though we done a good bit of improvement to our home since eps was done over 4 year ago was disappointing as epc says we use 9000 kWh to heat and 3000 for hot water but in real life we used about 3500 to heat and about 600-700 kWh for hot water thanks to solar and storage. So if we had great installer thats know there stuff and could get 400% soc happy to do few sums to reassure us that it will be worth the out lay and be cheaper to run eyc we more than likely have heat pump now ! And yes ive even contacted one of your heat geek assured installer last year and after a chat he agreed with me a heat pump would be no cheaper to run that our gas bill being so low so i decided to do my own tests and started using electric oil filled radiators and looked into infrared panels etc maybe heat pump in 2024

Great results and great content! How did you measure the heat pumps? It is easy to calculate the power consumption, but how do you know the thermal heat that a HP provides to the system?

I’m a home owner with a heat pump and I hear a lot about SCOP. I set my heating curve as low as possible and achieved a SCOP of 5.7 for the year which was great on paper. On our annual service - the engineer commented that the heating and hot water consumption was about 50% higher then expected for a family of 2. Is it time we stop optimising SCOP and start optimising energy input? Im not convinced the two are mutually exclusive. Does the lower the temp = higher scop but … higher energy consumption with pumps having to increase the flow rate to compensate? What’s marketing and what’s reality?

Slightly tangential point but have you considered installing a wastewater heat recovery system to improve the hot water SCOP? e.g. powerpipe, recoup, zypho etc

I'm making a change to my settings that I know will make my SCoP worse. I'll be setting hot water heating to run in the coldest part of the night. I'm pretty sure it'll be worth it as I'm on an EV tariff that's less than a quarter of the price of my daytime tariff. Just feels a bit sad to spoil my SCoP

I had a Midea ASHP installed Aug22, how can I find what my Scop is? and how would I know if my pump was correctly installed for the best performance Thanks for your videos they are very informative.

Hi, what is your opinion on the Mixergy cylinder?

amazing work

What do you think about producing hot water only with heat pump water heater, split or not?

Do you have a video informing customers what questions they should be asking installers before they sign on the dotted line ?

So...now I am very curious about that hot water optimisation...because that's where I also see the largest risk to a efficiency.

Do you have any cost comparison to the studies mentioned? I interest in how we articulate the value of system design excellence vs what we've seen to date. A simple info graphic would be great to help people understand so they don't just go for the cheapest quote. People understand MPG in cars and how if they invest in a more efficient car the running costs will be lower, we could do with something similar in the industry perhaps?

Hi Heat Geek. I find your videos very informative and I'm sure the training would be a huge help to installers. I used to be a plumber and if I was still installing I would imagine your training would be invaluable seeing the results the trained installers get. I now work as a plumbing apprentice instructor (in Ireland). I think heatpump installer training should be part of apprentice training even if only at a basic level to make apprentices aware of the effect of all the variables. As plumbers with gas and oil boilers, location and settings are not things that are given much thought and this will probably lead on to a lot of plumbers feeling the same about heatpumps (stick it in and walk away) Are you aware of any apprentice training centers in Great Britain linking with trainers like yourselves? Have you any plans to get involved in that sort of training, or consulting with the people who design the syllabus? Keep up the good work. The real change will happen when people save money and that will only happen with increased efficiency. Would you have a link to any of your training that might be suitable for apprentice. I show some of your videos in class but could share training that you think might suit 2nd and 3rd year apprentices. They could go on to purchase the training privately.

Hello from Greece! How can I measure the efficiency of my heat pump? I have a HITACHI Yutaki-M RASM-5NE (14KW). What is your opinion for this heat pump? Thank you for your information, I am a simple user, but I have learned a few things from you.

Is the data nornalised for the years outdoor temperature?

Can you provide us with with info regarding fan coils?

If you wish to fit a heat pump to an existing house. It improves the cop to get to a lower emitter temperature. Would it work if you had an extension to build, which could have an insulated concrete mass floor with buried pipes. You would I think feed the radiators at cooler input temperature but increased flow and then put the half cool water through the concrete floor, before returning to the heat pump? I understand underfloor mass heating feels warm at cooler temperatures as its area is so large. It might reduce the upsizing of radiators and get the cop as low as mass underfloor heating?

I live in a 3 bedroom bungalow if you want to have a radiator in one of or all of the bedrooms can you restrict the night temperature. say to 10 degrees without affecting the efficiency

What's your take on the Mitsubishi QUHZ 4kW with R744 (CO2) refrigerant? Given it runs at high temps and it seems to a layperson like myself that you promote lower temps & lower flow rates to get higher (S)COP values. My use will be for a new build (AECB standard) for underfloor heating and hot water. Many thanks for any advice/info. 🧐

Thanks for sharing this. Is it possible to see the raw data for the calculations of the SCOP and what parameters have been used, ie flow temperatures etc? There seems to be quite a disparity between lowest and highest performance between 2.98 and 5.48 on mixed. Also, you quote 107 heat pumps tested but are only 31 on the data sheet. Is it possible for the COP to be shared within the ranges of outdoor temperatures as one of my concerns around heat pumps is that we always talk about SCOP which from my understanding works really well for people on monthly or quarterly bills that average themselves out over the year, however how would that look to someone who is using a credit meter in the middle of winter? Really enjoyed the video though.

I own a plumbing and heating Company 90% of all work is breakdown work and I would love for our engineers to start being able to cover heat pumps as well, the problem being the only courses I can find are installation, not fault finding. My other option would be to employ an engineer who already installed heat pumps and learn from them, but as we are struggling to even get heating engineers at the moment I'm not sure this will be option, any suggestions

Hi @HeatGeek, I'm trying to understand the impact of having several 90-degree turns in a condensation line set for a ducted A/C and heat pump. The line set has five 90-degree turns and stretches about 20 feet, with 3 feet going straight up. The heat pump is rated for 150 linear feet or 50 vertical feet. I've seen online estimates that suggest each 90-degree turn adds anywhere between 2-7 feet. Can you clarify how critical it is to reduce the number of 90-degree turns? (Note, the installation is not complete, and I see a way to reduce the number of 90-degree turns down to one while reducing the length by about 8 feet. However, the line set will not be along the wall, which could be a minor tripping hazard. )

Are the scop you mention for 35°C water or high temperature water ? My home has big cast iron radiators and it is supposed to be heat with high temperature water like 60°C. Can I have a scop of 4 with that temperature ? Also the hot water needs to be heat to 60°C

4.14 SCOP since the system was installed end of Feb, including hot water. Be good to see how it performs through a full year. For context, 1950s end terrace ex council house, EPC after ASHP installed is 89.

A have a Midea ASHP and figures are all rounded to a whole number so I can't get a SCOP figure. I have looked at the monitoring system and it seems to be about £700 to £800. Could you do a more detailed explanation of what is needed and how to set it up?

You mention that the SCOP includes hot water. What hot water temperature did you use in your study?

How did u measure the effectiveness? I am optimizing my heatpump system for 5 years and i get a true scop of 3. but i also measure the true electrical usage including the additional electrical resistance heater for deicing, the electrical usage of the pump and the electrical consumption of the underfloor heating valves. With my airconditioner in heating mode i get a scop of 4.

Do you give those trainings to people outside UK? Or have some equivalent trainings to recommend? I'm in Belgium.

I’ve had a quote for a heat pump from octopus and they said that 10mm plastic pipe wouldn’t be replaced when installing the system, is plastic pipe ok to be used with ashp?

Is a SCOP of >3.5 achievable using existing 10mm pipework to radiators?

This is extraordinary level of efficiency ..we have an LG THERMA V and surely it could work better.. Definitely will find our local installer..

What would you recommend for a bungalow currently using night storage heaters? Presumably, we would need radiators, so installation cost would be significant and payback would take many years.

Need to know if this the route for us. How we are looking at has 6600sq ft. Two gas boilers installed in 2019. Would a heat pump be suitable in this property and who can I get to quote for it ?

Just gets better and better, this should go on National TV.

Cracking figures Adam - let's hope the model of working with folks with a clue hold just as true at scale!

An efficiency of 449% with a heat pump though still has a major problem. Domestic electricity in the U.K. is about 4 times the price of gas for the same energy so swapping from gas to a heat pump costing many thousands of pounds is still not a saving.

Could you please provide the average cost of installation for all the systems used for the data? As the data is for a year can it be projected over say 10 years using a temperature/climate adjusted coefficient?

Is the SCOP calculation normalised for the last years weather - would be interested to see a video on how you normalise data so you can compare it year to year.

I got a scop of 3.86. 1521 kwh consumed and 5900 generated. I heat one level 170 m2 house. From November till May.

Simon got me a Scop 4.5

Any chance of explaining how an Air-to-air heat pump can work within an MVHR system? I've been trying to design such a combined system for use in my home in the future, because installing any sort of air-to-water heat pump system would pretty much require completely gutting my house. It's much easier to install air supply/extract ducts to each room than it is to try to replace the old microbore pipework, but I'd really like some learned opinions on what I can expect with this setup before I go for it.

New deal with OVO? Am certainly interested now with the 15p per unit cost. When will it be “official”? Any comments @heatgeek :)

Do you also have people in the Netherlands following your training?

How to calculate what is the COP AND SCOP FOR MINE?????

Floor insulation. Can the crawl space be sealed/insulated and then hot air used to heat the floor and the rest of the house? Can exhausted used hot air recycled through air to air heat exchanger to make whole system more efficient?

Never mind the SCOP . You had a syrup installed ? 🤔

It wouls be good to have a video on what to check for to improve scop. My mums energy bill is about the same as mine i have my heating set at 20 24/7 and rhere are 6 of us in the house its a 3 bed mid terrace 60s built house well insulated with b efficiency and solar. My mum has a bungalow one bed again 60s built well insulated b efficiency with solar. She has a mitsubishi heat pump and i think she heats to about 21. I dont understand why her bills are similar to ours considering we are in a bigger space and we dont have solar to help heat as we heat with gas. According to her panel in the air cupboard she gets roughly 2.5 scop but i find ir very had to believe considering we are paying virtually the same to heat.

Sad… you don’t have installers in the Scotland 😢

do you sell in the USA?

… please do not wait to longer to release your next video 😂

Is there not a huge uncontrolled variable here? Cost of energy has rocketed in a cost-of-living crisis and so for this date range could people be reducing comfort temperatures and this would cause less demand on the pump..? Sorry if that’s a dumb question.

I dont know what SCOP means but our heat pump works at 5.5x effeciency. It dropped to 4x last winter. An engineer i know socially said this was not possible in terms of the laws of physics. So is my system lying to me? Last winter was our warmest ever day and night in our house, thanks to not being able to turn it off like you would a gas boiler, which was lovely, and the bills were £400 per month then. Some context: we use 12 panel solar and battery (negligible benefit in winter due to positioning on roof and shade from neighbours' trees), eco tariff as we have EV, and heat the water at night on cheap rate. We have triple insulation, maximum loft insulation 1990 built solid interior wall Alexander home (well built, no frills) . In the summer the solar is a much greater benefit and the Eddi fitted later diverts the excess solar once the battery is full to topping up the water heating.

So in theory then no installer should be quoting a scop of less than 4?

With last winter being very mild with only 1 cold week in early december would we not expect a higher than normal scop?

Some help please…. I had my ASHP installed in Dec 2022, initially quoted for a 14kw mitsu Ecodan but ended up getting a 11kw as the location was unsuitable. MCS Scop quoted was 3.7 and i am getting 2.8 inc HW (3.1 exc HW). I wasn’t aware the quoted SCOP on the MCS cert doesn’t take into account HW consumption so i feel like i have been flung a dead horse! The ASHP costs so much more to run considering the current energy prices. Am i in a position to complain given that i feel as though I have been missold?! I wish i never bothered getting this ASHP installed 😞

2 things do you have your own team of installers, i don't mean trained by you but employed by you? Second the pink dotted line on your graph denoting gas running costs. Does that mean you need a SCOP of above 3.5 for your running costs to be lower than gas?

We have a condensing boiler but we also have a couple of built in Mitsubishi Electric air-con units which are fantastic in the summer. They also have a heat mode. What heat source are these? Are they Heat Pumps? If so, would it be better to use them in the winter instead of the boiler and radiators? Thanks!

Do you have any particular information about the daikin atherma systems....their driving me mad 🤦‍♀️ 1 year in and it's nothing but bother 😭

I live in the middle of BC, Canada with a force air natural gas furnace. How do the variables change with climate and not using radiators. We have incentives to install heat pumps but they want us to remove the gas furnace. This doesn't make much sense to me.

This kind of knowledge should be as far and widespread as possible. And quickly. The example of a personal power bill is one thing, and certainly nice, but can you imagine the total effect of 10-20% improvements at a national or global level. We're talking about incredible reductions in climate impact and also financially of course!

Four pipe buffer?

"We train these guys and you can find them on our map or through our portal." - I can't find such a map on your website, what's the link?

Great news

Does the fact that the last 12 months have been the warmest on record not have a huge bearing on the efficiency of heat pumps?

Great results. Do you have any plans for expanding your brand outside of the UK?

Here's my data. Vaillant 97/7 7kW heat pump. Runs 100% on weather, no thermostat. Data includes 280l hot water tank, with one shower and one baths daily. Floor heating in the entire house, 110m2. Everything is heated all the time. No zones. Terraced house built in 1978 in The Netherlands. HR+++ windows, floor insulated, 6cm cavity filled with foam, roof insulated as it was back in the 70s + only 5cm fiber glass, ground floor very well insulated with 14cm PIR insulation. We had a cold winter, -12 at max for a few days, don't have any more weather data though. Data from 11 July 22 to 10 July 2023. 4.46 COP December 4.8 COP January 4.93 COP February 4.77 COP March 5.0 COP April

The problem with scop is it’s an annual measurement. I only heat in winter when cop is much lower. So the reality is it’s loads more expensive than gas. Sadly. Unless I’m missing something.

what also needs taking into account is install costs, its all great going for max scop's but if install costs double due to that, is that what the customer wants and can afford upfront, or is it not more sensible to get responsible to good systems out there first then possibly upgrade more in time to speed up the roll out, meet budgets and lower CO2 emissions 🤷‍♂️ you also have to cater for the average customer that wants 2 zones per room and use it like an on/off switch with no attempt to system efficiency, theres only so many times you can bang your head on a wall trying to explain these things.

why cant i fit it in the attic?......

You avoid the one question most of us sceptics have. Show us a graph of the cost of installation vs SCOP. Also what inconveniences are wreaked on the customer? For example, in a 70’s house with small bore central heating buried in concrete floors. What guarantees of the SCOP to be achieved do you give and what happens if you don’t achieve it? It is not unknown for installers to suddenly go broke when faced with such a challenge and then reappear a few months later under a different company name………. I could go on…..

QUESTION: why have you guys stopped posting videos???

To achieve this 4.15 costs a lot more to install, the installation cost is just simply way way too much my new 93 percent gas boiler 2000 heats pump system 35k so tell me exactly efficient or not where is the saving

Any reason why the pump is not looked at in regards to efficiency, a mag drive pump would be much more efficient than a none mag drive ,

Found your channel because I need to replace my gas boiler. Great info, thank you for making it available to the general public. Now I'm struggling to find a company that can answer to my questions. It's incredible that the market is full of such an amount of uninformed sales personnel. I don't live in the UK, I live in Luxembourg. Do you think is normal that the 2 cotes I already received are 40k€+ to heat a house from 1960 with 110m2 plus hot water?

What SCOP are you getting in your house after your recent swap?

You've basically identified the difference between an engineer and plumber here - most gas fitters essentially take a glance and then hazard a guess at the design of a system (massive assumption there, but in general), the trained heating engineers will actually do some maths before they actually do the installation 👍

If this is nothing to do with installation do you think its applicable to my 10 yearold nibe heat pump. That uses 6500kwh per year. If some one thinks they can help please drop me a msg

👍 thank you for your kind reply you have managed to convert a physicist sceptic to watch your video 😂 👍 l appreciate it …will be in touch

I hate promotional sales pitches which say 'we are learning and 'I'm sure we will improve' But what about all the installations you did before you 'learnt and improved' Will you go back and upgrade them to your latest educated guess about how good HP are? Free??

Does this factor in the limited zoning and setbacks and how that affects total energy usage? do you have data on this? Great stuff though!

SCOP is all well and good, but lifetime costs are where the reality is!

Air to air heat pumps are the kings

What type of heat pump? Long ago GSHPs were few and far between and ASHPs, frankly, sucked. It is very clear that the type of installation will make a huge difference to the winter (in particular) operation. You made no mention of the ratio of GSHP:ASHP installations carried out. This could lead to some very misleading suggestions of average COP. What is the difference between an ordinary, plain COP and this quoted SCOP, please? GSHPs have a great advantage in our damp and chilly climate in that they do not need to defrost the heat exchanger (I wonder, too, if these defrosting costs are included in ASHP COPs). When total clarity prevails, I may well install a heat pump - but likely a bore-hole GSHP, not an (as at the present time) unproven ASHP.

What Adam isn't sharing is that their Elite heat pump installer quotes are often 2-3X the average quotes from national installers like Octopus. Yes their installers are nowhere near as capable but when the cost of installation is factored in, neither a Heat Geek or Octopus installation can compare to the savings of a Viessmann V-200 running on the Octopus tracker gas tariff.

I think it is the scop value itself that gives a false result …excluding domestic hot water considerations to keep it simple as possible, any claim of an on site Scop value requires the following measurements 1. A dedicated cumulative electrical energy meter for energy input for output 2. Continuous measurement of input and output temperatures by say thermocouples or thermistors IN the pipes 3. Continuous measurement of heating water flow rate, again by an inflow flow device , preferably delivering a Iitre / second ( =Kg/s) reading ….The energy output in Kw at a given instant is then found =from Mass water flowing kg / sec x specific heat water KJ per kg per def C x temp rise deg C …Outputs 2&3 are fed into an interface logging values every second or better and also connected to a computer running appropriate software..Using the the above equation integrates the instantaneous energy readings over a chosen time thus finding the true value of energy out in KWh…ONLY THEN can the calculated Scop values be considered valid , otherwise it is estimated or worse inflated or even one could say imagined 😂😂😮

🤘😎🤘

Can I ask how an air source pump can ever beat gas based on cost alone? My electricity costs 4 x more than gas per kw/h which means that even if I were fortunate enough to see a 400% efficiency from a pump I would at best only break even on monthly bills. None of this even takes into account the cost of design, supply, installation and the necessary upheaval involved. Unless electricity drops significantly in cost this equation can never change which hardly bodes well for the government plans to swap us all over to electric power alone! I also can’t understand why Octopus energy will only offer their really cheap off peak rates to those running ev’s? Yet again this strategy alienates those of us without solar panels from the concept of using storage batteries as a way of reducing peak power demands and using power that might otherwise be lost. There seem to be too many vested interests at play here rather than a truly concerted effort to save the planet.